The Contribution of Informatics to the development of Social networks and their impact on society.

Informatics, being a hub of technologies has given rise to the evolution of social networks and their effective impact on the society. Current World, Without Information technology would just be a Void. Being in an era of social networks which is nothing but a creative product of Informatics, I can proudly say that I am a Software Engineer. 

The prime reason for 21^st century being driven by social networks and internet can only be the major developments in Information Technology or Informatics. There were exponential developments in the field of Informatics in 21^st century, which included changes in several fields such as User Experience, IT delivery, Info & Communication, Innovation and Usage model, and Data Storage. Having said that, Attractive User Experience which mainly includes GUI s, touch UI, next-gen mobile has proven to be the driving force for the people around the world towards social networks.  Data centres, Cloud services, app stores, PCs’, Smart phones, Browsers and many server side technologies  such as Web services which have made the access to social networks a cake walk, come under the developments in IT delivery. E-mails, CMS/DMS, Social media have helped the information and Communication department of Social networks to the peak extent. Innovation and Usage models such as Enterprise, Consumer models and Business Intelligence are a major part of Strategic developments of Social networks. Data Storage which is nothing but a Backbone of Social networks has been a major area of research in 21^st century and hence lead to several Data storage techniques to store huge Data and many innovative researches in Data Mining have favoured Social networks in terms of data storage and hence have helped them to maintain records of millions of users.

There were many evolutions in Programming and Scripting languages which have eased the development of website in general. New frameworks in UI side scripting, Such as JQuery which has techniques such as Database maintenance at the UI side, are turning out to be of great use. Several Frameworks such as GWT (Google Web development Toolkit), STRUTS, JSF, and SPRING etc., have made the job of developers of Social network very easy were developed. Programming languages such as JAVA, PHP, C#, etc have provided multiple platforms for the user to come up with a social networking website and hence not restricting the user to a particular programming platform. As a result of significant development in terms of Distributed systems (for Ex new J2EE concepts) which allow the development to be distributed in many places, Web development in general has become easy and productive. The Client – Server interaction which is a core part of any social network is being optimised and there are new optimal techniques such as RMI are provided by informatics to help the development of social networks.

As quoted by the great Philosopher Aristotle, “Man is by nature a social animal”. For the current world, it will turn out to be as “Man is a social network animal by nature”. Nowadays, people interact more through social networks than in persona and are also more comfortable and happy being connected through Social networks. It will not be wrong if we say, Social networking has created a Virtual world where likeminded people exchange their thoughts and stay connected. For the Family members and Friends which stay at distant places from each other, Social networks act as channel to stay in touch and to keep each other Updated about the happenings which occur in each other’s life.

 There are several other perspectives for people being connected through social networks. Which includes exchange of knowledge or daily affairs that occur in the society such as Sports, Politics, technology, Fashion, Films etc., the affection of people of opposite sex, and nowadays even corporate strategy is to find employees through social networks. It will not be wrong if we say that, few people are so obsessed by Social networks that they are even ready to compromise their daily routine for accessing Social networks. Social networks (for ex Facebook, Twitter) are mainly designed to suit the human psychology and the way people like to interact with each other. The features such as like, comment, posts and photo sharing have completely jelled with the people‘s desires and hence have attracted millions of users.

There are several Social networks which are famous around different parts of the World. American-based services Facebook, Google+, and Twitter widely used worldwide; Nexopia in Canada;^[1] Badoo,^[2] Bebo,^[3] VKontakte, Draugiem.lv (mostly in Latvia), Hi5, Hyves (mostly in The Netherlands), iWiW (mostly in Hungary), Nasza-Klasa (mostly in Poland), Skyrock, The Sphere, StudiVZ (mostly in Germany), Tagged, Tuenti (mostly in Spain), and XING^[4] in parts of Europe;^[5] Hi5 and Orkut in South America and Central America;^[6] LAGbook in Africa;^[7] and Cyworld, Mixi, Orkut, renren, weibo and Wretch in Asia and the Pacific Islands (WikiPedia), indicating that the whole World has transformed into a phase where social networking has become a Worldwide business and hence giving rise to a new market for creative people to earn money , needless to mention the achievements  of people like Mark Zukkerberg (Founder of Facebook.com) .

Studies indicate that social networking has a positive Impact on social connectedness and wellbeing (Valkenburg & Peter, 2009; Ofcom, 2008). However, negatives are more evident (Cross et al., 2009), with much media attention focused on the ‘dangers’ of online social networking such as bullying and inappropriate use of personal information.   As per the survey conducted by APS (Australian Psychological Society),

• Online social networking is being used by people across the age range
• 70% of survey respondents report spending less than two hours a day on sites
• 28% have had a ‘bad experience’ using social networking sites
• 53% feel social networking has increased contact with friends and family
• 26% report increased participation in social activities as a result
• Patterns of ‘sociability’ that occur in real life appear to be replicated online
• 25% of 31–50 year old respondents have had a date with someone met online
• 21% of these have gone on to form an intimate relationship

In conclusion, Informatics can be treated as a Backbone of Social networks with enormous amount of supporting technologies and tools which have given to evolution of the world of Social networks. There are still many technologies being developed to support Social networking.  On the other hand, there is a huge impact of Social networks on the current society in both positive and negative ways. Social Networking is turning out to be a market place for the creative folks to earn money and is turning out to be a major competitive area for big companies such as Google etc.

References:

·         http://en.wikipedia.org

·         http://www.psychology.org.au/publications/inpsych/2010/december/social/

·         Cross, D. et al. (2009). Australian covert bullying prevalence study. Perth: Edith Cowan University.

·         Ofcom. (2008). Social networking: A quantitative and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours and use. Retrieved 28/10/10 from stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/media-literacy/ report1.pdf

·         Valkenburg, P. M. & Peter, J. (2009). Social consequences of the internet for adolescents: A decade of research. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 1-5.